Interactive broker is not just any average broker but is in true sense an ECN broker for the starters. The company was established way back in the year 1977 but started online or internet vased foreign exchange trading only in 1998. ECN broker literally means that the broker will be dealing against you. But, Interactive broker would like you seeing do successful trades as they will get commission out of it as they do not take profit from spread. The platform provided by Interactive broker is not for beginners and is in fact for professional traders. They provide multiple order types and thus provide its traders massive flexibility. Other than Forex IB also allows you to trade in bonds, stocks, futures and Options in more than 90 markets available around the world.
The trading platform offered by IB to its trader is “TraderWorkstation” which is their proprietary. The platform has very different features and cannot be considered user friendly as such. However, this platform is needed because of the multiple order types. The customer support service at IB is very helpful and they provide the support in English as well as many other languages. To help the customers all over the world they have many multilingual agents or staffs. The platform provided by the company is very useful for ECN trading and has been found to have uptime 99% and the program runs on Java and hence can be accessed on any computer which has internet access. The broker is highly regulated in US as well as many other countries like Australia, Japan and UK. IB charges commission on every trade that you do and is 0.2 basis points of the trade value or the minimum commission is $2.50 per turn. There are no promotions at IB.
Tough the reliability of a company can be checked by the fact that it is regulated or not, their true performance can be got only through reviews. It is the most established company in the forex market and has many long term clients. Some of the reviews say that being well established company they have faith in it. The service is said to be very professional. They allow mobile trading which is listed as one advantage of trading with them. Most of them speak about its very competent platform and the decent leverage that it gives compared to other US based brokers. Most of the reviewers like it for being an honest company and the fact that they allow hedging. Some of the cons mentioned in the reviews include traders not liking the commission being charged on their trade. Some of them say the cons is that they do not have any bonuses. They do not allow scalping which is a cause of concern for many traders who like to scalp. Their char is not that very great and is a concern for many traders. The minimum amount required to open an account with them is $10,000. However, for Indian traders the amount is only $5000. The average rating given to it is 5.8 out of 10.» Sign up now